8 Advanced features
Introduction
This chapter introduces several of the more sophisticated features of Fireworkz.
Topics covered include:
- Using pictures
- Adding a date
- Setting up and perform mail merge
Pictures
Load the document saleslet2 from the Tutorial directory.
You will see that it contains a letter from a company which is a standard
reply to customers who have enquired about prices and products.
The document contains a picture, the name of the company in coloured
letters up the side of the page, the company’s address, the text of the
letter and, at the bottom of the page, a table.
Adding pictures
Pictures, either in the form of Draw files, Sprites or JPEGs can be
added to a document simply by drawgging the file containing them in to
your open document. In this example, the company logo has been added using
this technique.
Moving a picture
The picture is in the wrong place. It is in the centre of the page when it
should be aligned with the left-hand edge of the text. To move it:
- Click in the area of the picture. A red outline will appear, with handles at the corners and on the edges.
-
Point inside this outline, press and hold down the left mouse button and
drag the picture to the left, until its left-hand edge aligns with the text.
- Release the mouse button. The picture will be dropped at this new position.
Changing the size of a picture
Now, you need to reduce the size of the picture:
- Click in the area of the picture. A red outline will appear, with handles at the corners and on the edges.
-
Point at the bottom right-hand corner handle, press and hold down the
left mouse button and drag this corner around until the picture is
approximately half of its original size.
- Release the mouse button. The picture will be resized to this new size.
Dates
The next step is to add the date to the letter.
You can add dates in a wide range of formats.
- Click at the left-hand edge of the line above the line containing the text ‘add1’.
-
Click the
Right justify tool button on the toolbar.
The caret will move to the right-hand edge of the page.
-
Choose
from the
sub-menu of the
menu. The
Insert date dialogue box will appear.
Fireworkz always uses today’s date as an example and shows it in each available format in the dialogue box.
- Choose one of the formats from the list.
-
Ensure that the
Live option is set, by clicking on it
if necessary. This means that whenever you open this document, the current date
will be used. If this option is switched off, the date entered today will stay
fixed in the document.
-
Click the
Insert button.
The date will be inserted into the document and displayed using the format you selected.
Mail merge
When this letter is sent to customers, it is personalised to some extent.
As enquiries arrive they are logged in a database, held in a separate Fireworkz
document. At the end of the day, responses to all the enquiries are printed
using the mail shot facility.
Load the document names from the Tutorial directory.
You will see that it contains a database of names and addresses held in the
rows of a spreadsheet.
Selecting the database
The first stage in setting up a mail merge is to choose the database holding
the names and addresses to be used. In this example, it is held in the
Names spreadsheet. You could have used:
- A list stored in a Fireworkz or Resultz spreadsheet
- A list stored in CSV format.
- A database stored in a Fireworkz Pro or Recordz document (Pro only).
To tell Fireworkz which document to use for mail merge:
- Make sure that saleslet2 is the active document by clicking in it if necessary.
-
Choose from the
menu.
A dialogue box will appear.
-
You need to select the file to use as your source of data. Click on
names.
-
Next you need to select the row which will be used to show you what is
happening when you add fields to your letter. Choose row 1 as this is the one
containing the titles of the columns.
-
Click the
OK button.
Adding fields to the letter
You are now ready to add the fields to your document. To do this:
-
Select the first line of the recipient’s address, ‘add1’, in the
saleslet2 document.
-
Open the
sub-menu from the
menu, and choose
.
A dialogue box will appear.
-
You need to enter the number of the column holding the information you
want to appear here. The first address field in the Names document is column
4, so enter 4 in the dialogue box.
-
Click the
Insert button.
In the sales letter document, you will see that the text ‘add1’ has been replaced by ‘Address1’.
-
Go through the next three lines, adding fields 5, 6 and 7.
These should insert text reading Address2, Address3 and Postcode respectively.
In the salutation line of the letter, you need to add the fields for the
title and the name:
- Select the word ‘title’ and insert field 1.
- Select the word ‘name’ and insert field 3.
Dealing with blank fields
One problem with this mail merge is that some addresses in the list have blank
fields, often before the postcode, which could cause blank lines to appear
within the address in the finished letter.
-
Choose from the
menu.
-
Choose row 5 and click the
OK button.
This will display the information for the fifth line of the database.
You will see that this introduces a blank line into the document as it contains an empty entry for the Address3 field.
Fireworkz allows you to deal with this as follows:
-
Choose
again,
and click the
Shuffle option button to switch it on.
This tells Fireworkz to move any blank lines that appear in the document
between certain fields to the end of the space.
-
The fields which you want to shuffle are just those containing address
information, so enter 4 as the start row and 7 as the end row in the
dialogue box.
-
Click the
OK button.
This will shuffle the blank line to the end thereby compacting the displayed address.
Printing
-
Choose
from the
menu.
-
You can print a test page using the currently selected record by clicking the
Print button.
-
If the test page appears correct, you can print a copy of the letter
for each of the people in the database.
Choose
again but this time click the
Mailshot button.
Summary
In this chapter you learned how to manipulate pictures, add dates and use the mail merge facility.
For more information, see the relevant chapters in the User Guide.